


the whole "being dead" thing

by knifecharm



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Animal Death, Background Relationships, Classic Horror References, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Gore, Horror, M/M, Minor Character Death, Slow Burn, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, Werewolf/Vampire AU, inspired by a ginger snaps rewatch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:14:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29839977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knifecharm/pseuds/knifecharm
Summary: A routine trip up Mount Ormond doesn't end as planned when Frank strays away from his friends in the midst of a winter storm.
Relationships: Danny "Jed Olsen" Johnson | The Ghost Face/Frank Morrison, Julie/Susie (Dead by Daylight)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 29





	1. Down The Wolf's Burrow

**Author's Note:**

> a "classic horror" monster au that's been sat on for a while. this one's going to be long, if i can keep myself to it. comments are greatly appreciated, as are kudos. if you want to stop by my twitter (@90skilled) or tumblr (voluspas) for updates or just to stop and say hi, feel free to do so! please enjoy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> animal death/substance abuse tw

A beat-up Chevy Silverado careens down a dirt road, flanked on either side by a never-ending row of shaking evergreens topped with freshly fallen snow. The once verdant trees look ebon in the moonlight that shines through the tightly knit gaps between them, bright and amber and full despite the clouds that partially conceal it. Freezing zephyrs of frost crash against the windshield and cloud it with flakes, only to be cleared by the wipers moments later. 

_“-Found pieces of Jennifer's bo-dy! Found pieces of Jennifer's bo-dy!”_ Susie and Julie sing in unison from the backseat, grating and off-key. 

Julie’s got a beer can in one hand and a joint in the other, a billow of thick smoke accompanying her as it trails up and out through the window, open only about a finger’s width to keep out the sleet. The skunky scent of shitty weed hotboxes Joey’s Chevy regardless of her shallow attempt to flush it. Frank swears he can see a physically manifesting cloud of green.

This is one of two typical Friday evenings for Frank’s Legion. On some nights they prefer getting into trouble; shoplifting from gas stations, bumming around the mall on Mount Richards and picking tourist’s pockets. On others, they’ll order a pizza and head up to the resort to escape the monotonous current that was the week’s work. Either way, they keep busy. 

“Don’t spill any fucking booze in my truck, Courtney,” Joey says after dialling the radio down to a quiet murmur. "You know what that song’s about, right? You sound like psychos singing along.” A tenor of annoyance is clear in his voice, but Frank can tell that he’s joking. He’s promptly ignored when the truck dips forward, causing Julie to pour a good third of her drink onto the seat between her thighs.

“Ah! Cold-!” Susie squeals, trying to edge away from the spill of beer as it trickles toward her skirt. Her seatbelt constricts around her. She’s the only person wearing one. 

“You bitch!” Joey scowls, craning his neck back to assess the damage. 

“You’re the one who hit the damn pothole,” Julie says as she wipes the faux-leather down with the sleeve of her flannel. Joey purses his lips and focuses his attention back on the road. He might be impulsive to a fault, but if he’s learned one thing from carting his friends around, it’s how to drive under pressure.

“Your ride’s already rank, Joe,” Frank adds. He’s looking out the window. His hood is up and he’s bobbing his head along with the music, fingers thrumming against his thigh. “What’s a little stale beer?”

“Yeah. It’s rank because of you people. I don’t smoke that shit.” Joey mutters as if he hadn’t passed out drunk in Julie’s bathtub in nothing but his underwear a week ago. The man might not smoke, but he sure knows how to party.

The girls exchange a look. Julie takes another drag of her joint, before passing it back to Susie, who coughs as she does the same, sputtering and red as her pupils visibly blow out wide. She fixes Frank with a grin, and, in return, he cranks the radio back up with his absent hand.

They’re only halfway through karaoking _Doll Parts_ by the time they finally pull into the lodge’s dilapidated garage. Julie gets out of the truck first, quickly followed by Susie. She’s always shadowing her like a lost dog, and Frank’s only now found it endearing rather than sad. He ignites his first cigarette of the evening while he watches his friends enter the resort one by one, laughing among themselves as he’s left to smoke the car up with heavy tobacco. Susie doesn’t like the smell, which is ironic since she probably smokes the most pot between the four of them. It helps with her anxiety, apparently.

The lodge itself is the perfect picture of grandness gone to spectacular waste. Mount Ormond Resort was once a sumptuous and celebrated landmark of the small town’s desperate climb up the economic ladder. Now, it’s nothing more than the sorrowful reminder of what could have been, save for one saving grace; _them._ It’s stark against the storm, standing proud through the gusts of wind that threaten to topple it. Graffiti overwhelms its expanse, paint dripping from each entranceway, littered with expletives and the occasional piece of genuine (if not abstract and obscene) art. The ski lift line behind its precarious wooden mass is nearly invisible because of the flurry. A faint red _‘BEWARE OF BEARS’_ sign flickers overhead, mounted across the upper floor’s balcony, cutting through the snow.

Frank steps out of the car and feels his feet sink low to the ground, cold biting at the gap between his jeans and his socks. His nose twitches. The wind blows through his hair. He tightens his jacket around him, burying his nose into the fringe of his hood as he feels fish hooks dig into his exposed skin. Calgary never got this cold. Sure- he had to bundle up, and whenever he felt the urge to climb up onto his foster’s roof during the winter he’d be sent back inside by an onslaught of freezing winds, but at least he could stand outside for over ten minutes to take in the scenery without feeling like his hands are going to fall off. He rubs them together as he walks toward the lodge, blowing hot breath between his frigid digits. 

A howl resounding across the landscape breaks his moment of reflection. It splits through the roar of the tempest, close and ear-splitting- too close and too ear-splitting for him not to turn around. He doesn’t expect to see what he does. 

Frank locks eyes with a hulking, two-hundred-pound gray wolf not twenty feet away from him. It’s standing proud and silent and still. Fluffy flakes of white muddle it into a blur of silver, but its silhouette is fucking _massive._ It has broad shoulders and a vivid amber gaze that bisects the dark, refulgent like a burning cinder, like a flashlight slicing through the night. 

Then, it runs off, dashing back into the blinding white. He follows it with his eyes, entranced. It picks up speed as it fades, disappearing past a thicket that edges the left side of the lodge. He loses it in the trees.

Frank blinks. _Wolves don’t get this close to the lodge,_ he thinks. Coyotes, maybe, but wolves are timid with people. The grating noise of Joey's truck pulling up accompanied by _Hole’s_ entire discography surely would’ve scared it off earlier. 

“Frank?” He hears a voice call from above. He peers upward to see Susie standing on the balcony, her pink hair now tucked back into a ponytail. He can hear music coming from inside the lodge. It sounds depressing; morbidly rhythmic. Julie's choice. It sounds like music from another world, far away, the talk and laughter from Joey and Julie dulled to a murmur. “Joey’s making drinks if you wanna come inside.”

“Just give me a sec!” He says, throwing his voice upward. “I- I think I saw something.” He mutters the rest to himself. She gives him a look, hugging her torso. 

“Okay. Just don’t freeze, alright?” She says, stepping back into the lodge and closing the balcony door behind her. Frank turns back to face the thicket. He doesn’t know why he gets the urge to follow. It’s a strange, other-feeling that grabs him by the shoulders and tugs him forward. He treks toward it carefully, his shoes sinking deeper into the snow. 

The resort grows distant, its outline dwindling into no more than a different shade of blue against the navy. The wolf had been deft in its escape, but it’d left behind a set of clearly defined footfalls. They’re big prints- bigger than his own. He tracks them in the dark with difficulty, once losing his footing and nearly tumbling face-first into the slush. That’s when he sees it. He pauses, his brows crinkling in confusion. The wolf’s paws cut off, only to narrow and shorten, thinning out into an arch and the ball of a foot. 

The newly emerging tracks are _human._ He follows them until they lead to the centre of the brake, the wind finally dying in his ears and the snow settling into a gentle flurry. He fishes into his pocket again, pulling his lighter out and dropping down to his haunches.

 _What the hell...?_ His jeans brush against the snow, the holes in the knees blushing harsh pink against the cold.

Within the hollow of one footprint forms a drop of blood.

It takes him a second to realize that it’s fresh, steam rising from the indent. Another fat drop of red drips onto the print, plateauing into a tiny puddle of crimson. His eyes narrow. He raises his Zippo up slowly toward the pines which thankfully block it from being snuffed out, watching as the dancing flame cataracts across the scene and envelopes it with a flickering orange tone. The scent of death is pervasive, sickly-sweet and odorous. It burns through his nostrils as he lets out an audible gasp.

_Jesus Christ._

Above him hangs a deer. Or, rather, _what’s left_ of a deer. It’s mounted between two evergreens, strung up upside-down, its bowels turned inside-out and already covered in a thin layer of frost that seeps into its bloody mass and melts with the heat of fresh death. Its antlers poke outward toward him, an attached patchwork of tangled shadow flitting back and forth with the light. He’s trapped in still, mordant fear, disgust and nausea mounting in his gut. 

Then, the world toss-turns. Frank’s Zippo drops to the ground when he’s tackled by what feels like the weight of an entire truck. The light is snuffed out, plunging him into sudden darkness. He cries out, trying to extend his arms as to break his fall, only for a sharp pain to encompass the entirety of his right hip. 

A sudden wetness blooms alongside a grip that holds him down with bruising force. He hears a growl in the dark, guttural and bellicose. He tries grabbing for the knife that lay in his pocket, just to be knocked backward again- this time, into a snowbank. 

_“Fuck!_ _”_ He thrashes, flopping onto his back- only to be dragged off further into the thicket by his leg. His screams are shrill and piercing, then eerily quiet. 

* * *

Frank’s world edges back into focus on what he assumes is the morning after. He’s walking down Sundance Court in Ormond, and his brain feels like cottage cheese. He can’t feel his hands and he can’t feel his feet. His vision is tinged with a haze of yellow and withering red that spiders in and out, ebbing like tide.

Eventually, he reaches a familiar red-brick Colonial. A Porsche is parked out front, sparkling clean notwithstanding the surrounding winter grime. Slowly- achingly- he makes his way toward the front porch and slumps up against the doorframe, feeling the recesses of his lungs grow and contract. Frank rings the doorbell in front of him twice, staining the gold leafing it with a smudge of bright crimson. The door opens five seconds later.

“Oh, my God,” Julie says. She's still in the clothes she was wearing the night before, and she looks as if she hasn't rested. Her brown eyes are underlined with a heavy layer of sleepless bruising, her face blanched white. Her ex-boyfriend must be a sight to behold in contrast; he’s covered in far too much blood for it all to be his own, half-naked, his flannel torn from the hem to the neckline. His jeans are ripped, the left leg split all the way up the side, and his face is a pale shade of green. His jacket is nowhere to be seen. “We... I thought you- did- Are you-” She sputters, eventually drifting off as she surges forward and embraces him with all the strength she has in her svelte arms.

“Hey, Jules…” He sounds as dazed as he appears. “Wanna order a pizza?” 


	2. Gorehound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cws for this chapter include an emetophobia warning.

A keen moan whistles through the evergreens with a long, agonized wail- and Frank is running against the grain of the wind as fast as he can. He doesn’t know where he’s running toward, or what he’s running away from. All he knows is that he’s going as fast as his legs can carry him, his lungs are about to burst into flames, and his hip feels as though it’s been through a meat grinder twice. 

He stumbles over his own feet, nearly diving face-first into a snowbank, but avoids it at the last second when he catches himself and continues his dash at breakneck speed. He’s always been good at running. In middle school he’d been on the cross country team; during their first race against the rest of the Calgary Catholic school district, he’d placed a grand sixth place, which his foster parents at the time hadn’t found worthy of note. They rarely found anything he did ‘worthy of note’, until he'd realized that negative reactions served his purpose just as well.

The cold rushes through his hair, soaked through with blood and snow, frost sticking to individual strands and twisting them into sharp red and blonde pine needles. He ducks beneath a twisting branch as he risks a single glance over his gaping shoulder (of which he can't feel the pain coming from), only to find that there’s nothing to see but acres upon acres of snow and underbrush. He slows to a jog- then, a full stop, skittering against the ice. He heaves out a series of half-breaths and collapses, settling his forearms on his knees, gasping like a drowning man. 

His head snaps up when he hears a branch splinter to his left with a deafening crack. He sits up, alert- his vision rights itself, working on adrenaline-fueled autopilot. He finds himself peering at a figure in inky black far to his left, abrupt against the shaded expanse of untouched ivory. It’s quickly drawing nearer. For a brief moment, it pauses in a cleft in the trees. 

It looks as if it’s staring up to the sky, cerebrating in the grey-amber glow of the moon. 

His memory blurs after that, like paint bleeding into water and muddling into a fading monochrome palette. 

*

When Julie left the house last night, she’d expected the morning after to begin with nothing more than a killer hangover. What she certainly wasn’t expecting was her ex-boyfriend to show up on her porch looking as if he’d just climbed out of a car wreck. This isn’t the first time he’d come crawling to her doorstep (and she isn’t enough of an idiot to think this’ll be the last), but, usually, he isn’t covered in blood that she knows for a fact isn’t his own. _Usually._

She withdraws to get a better look at his face, trying to find any damage or cuts or bumps or bruises as to explain his dazed expression, only to find him gazing back with a pair of perfectly normal, perfectly brown eyes. His pupils aren’t dilated or ruddy, but still- he’s staring at her with a blank, hampered expression. 

“A... pizza?” She says, loosening her grip around his shoulders. He ragdolls in her arms before promptly straightening, as if his body had momentarily collapsed only to be perked up with a series of wires. He moves past her, slow and enervated. “Frank-”

“-Unless you’ve got something for me in the fridge.” He pushes away and forces his body through the door, not bothering to take his shoes off as he stumbles into the kitchen, visible from the front foyer. Without giving her another glance he begins carting through the fridge haphazardly, occasionally shoving an item roughly to the side. A green apple drops to the ground, rolling until it stops at her bare feet. She bends over to pick it up, turning it over once in her hand. 

The front door is still open behind her as she meets him in the kitchen. She’s quiet with her movements, muffling her footfalls- she approaches him as if he were an easily startled animal.

 _He’s finally fucking lost it._ That, or something happened last night- something _bad-_ and he’s in some sort of shock-state. She knows the signs. She’d witnessed one or two many tumbles from the second row of the cheer pyramid before she’d quit Fairview’s pep squad for good. Not so coincidentally, that’d been the same year Frank appeared in her life to sweep her up off her feet. _Sure fell for Prince Charming,_ she thinks, scoffing inwardly. 

She can hear chewing. He’s already got something in his mouth. She assumes it’s one of the fruit cups her mother had bought. When she grows closer, she hears an occasional open-mouthed smack. _Gross._ Her brows furrow as she moves to meet his side.

“So… you wanna tell me what the fuck happened last night?” He grunts in response. “You can’t just bust in here like you don’t owe me an explanation. You worried the shit out of us. Where the hell did you even go?” He doesn’t respond. She moves closer, reaching a hand out to rest it firmly on his shoulder. “Earth to Morrison- are you stoned or stupid?”

She freezes. 

He’s chewing on a _raw_ steak. He’d taken it out of the package, ripped it up the side with his teeth, presumably, and let the plastic drop to the linoleum floor in a puddle of red. _Eating_ is also a subjective term; he’s devouring it, tearing it apart with his teeth as if he’s been starved. She jumps back toward the island counter close to her hip, her face bending into a look of disgust and hesitancy.

“What the hell are you-” He growls at her. He _growls._ It’s deep and guttural and long the opposite of a keening purr. His hackles raise like an animal’s, and his nose crinkles up into a snarl. His eyes, concealed by the early dawn’s lack of light save for that from the fridge, focus on hers and narrow into near slits. Then- and _God,_ she really hopes she isn’t going crazy- they flash amber, bright and yellow and clear as the moon had been the night before, spilling through the evergreens like liquid honey.

Julie takes a step back. Normally, she wouldn’t be one to back down first- but in this situation, she’ll take a pass on holding her ground. He turns back to face the fridge, all the while shovelling more raw meat into his mouth. He’s using his hands, ripping stripes of flesh from bone in a way that makes Julie want to become a vegetarian. 

She edges around him, toward the foyer. Once he’s out of earshot (though it doesn’t seem as if he’s paying much attention to anything besides his meal) she takes her phone from her pocket, calling the third number down on her contact list. She can hear Susie from the passenger seat, cut off in the middle of one of her long-winded thoughts as Joey answers on the second ring.

“We checked the gas station, we checked his place, we-” His tone is breathless.

“Joe! Chill, it’s… it’s okay. He’s here, with me. And he’s alright.” She pauses. “Kind of.” She summarizes Frank’s behaviour, though she chooses to redact the part that he looks, well, _physically_ fine. She risks a glance up to find him on his haunches, the dried blood in his hair dying blonde strands crimson. He truly seems like an animal, hunkered down with his back to her, basking in the white light from the fridge like a psycho out of a horror flick. 

She sees that his shirt is torn across the back, not just the front. It’s slicked with carmine from the shoulder all the way down to the elbow, though the skin that lay beneath it is void of any marks or cuts. She needs to get rid of his clothes, first. Then he can take a shower and they can work from there.

“I thought he was gonna attack me.” _Thought he was gonna_ eat _me._ _You should’ve seen his eyes._

“Should we call the cops? Or, like... take him to a hospital?” He sounds reluctant to accept anything but a yes. She knows he cares about him just like the rest of them do, but Joey’s always had a protective charm to him that she would’ve found irritating coming from anyone else. At least he knows when to sit back and let her be the brains- the same can’t be said for Frank. “If he’s acting weird he might have a concussion or something. Again.” _Again._ The last time he’d gotten a concussion he’d still been on the basketball team. Somehow she doubts he’d just hit his head on the sidewalk. The _eating raw meat on the floor_ thing might have something to do with that.

“I think that’s the last thing we should do.” She bites her lip, breathing in sharply through her nose. “They’ll ask too many questions. I think something happened out there, Joe. Something… _weird._ I can’t explain it over the phone. Meet me here in an hour. And, before you ask any questions- don’t.” 

“We were gonna stop by anyway. Is he-” 

“-What’d I just say?” Joey sighs.

“Right. Fine. I get it. But you two better have some answers for me when I get there.” A clamouring sounds from the living room. She audibly sighs down the line.

“No promises.”

* * *

Frank wakes next staring up at a popcorn ceiling, his vision blurring into focus. Julie stands over him, her jet black hair framing her face, still pallid from sleeplessness and bruised with light stains of insomniac violet. Her visage is wrinkled with worry- an uncommon occurrence. 

“You passed out.” She says curtly. The anxiety quickly falls from her face. She hates looking as if she’s doting on him; when he’d woken up in this exact position before with an ice pack pressed to the side of his head and a Hello Kitty bandage arbitrarily placed over the bridge of his nose, she’d made up some bullshit excuse to get him out of her house as soon as possible. Then again, her parents were coming back soon, and he’d just finished brawling with some punk kid near the gas station. “Did you get jumped or something?” 

“A ‘good morning’ would be nice,” He says, sitting up on the couch. His head hurts more than it ever has- like an icepick had been rammed through it and pulled out half-way through his temple. His nose twitches at the thought. “A coffee for this hangover wouldn’t hurt, either. You don’t need to act like a cunt just cuz we aren’t official anymore. You know that, right?” He raises a hand to his forehead, rubbing between his eyebrows. “And what do you mean, ‘did you get jumped’?” _Or something._ “What the fuck happened last night?” 

“You don’t remember?” She raises a thin eyebrow. 

“If I remembered I wouldn’t be asking.” She gives him a look. “Did I drink too much?”

“Yeah. Totally. _I’m_ the one acting like a cunt. Sorry for caring.” Despite her words, she doesn’t look away- in fact, she only draws nearer. After a beat, she gets right up in his face; her brown eyes are wide and searching. “You’re... not lying, are you?” 

“What?” He asks, startled. “Is there something on my face?” She grabs his chin firmly, tilting his head upward and closer toward the sunlight streaking through the half-closed blinds. Her gaze narrows in time with his own. 

“You aren’t lying. Your eyes. They’re...”

“My _eyes?_ That's- what’s wrong with my eyes?” He scrambles to his feet and heads toward the first-floor bathroom, pushing her away as gingerly as he can. He tries to ignore the constant thrumming in his head and the sand-paper dryness of his throat while she follows him, her worried mien returning. She’s hovering over him like a mother, not bothering to conceal her trepidation. He gives her one last hesitant look before opening the door and glancing in the mirror.

His eyes are gold; a deep yellow, like amber, like moonlight, as opposed to their typical charcoal brown. The whites are obvious against the bold colouring of his irises, refulging and constricting the closer he gets to the glass.

“You _walked._ From the lodge. You walked here half-naked with one shoe, and you were covered in blood, and…” She chokes down a panicked breath. “You’re really, _really_ scaring the shit out of me right now.” She never gets like this- her expressions are usually limited to scoffs, devastating glares, and the occasional withering smirk. “If this is a joke, I swear to _God,_ Morrison, I’ll kill you myself.” She cuts off as he edges closer to the mirror, pulling at the bottoms of his eyelids as if to check for some sort of film or cataract. He finds neither. 

“Do I have jaundice?” Frank says. She shoves at his shoulder, sneering.

“That’s not what jaundice looks like, dumbass.”

“And how the hell do you know?” She sighs.

“I just do, okay? It isn’t jaundice.” 

He tries to come up with a retort, only to promptly vomit. 

Julie cries out, surging forward to brace him by his shoulders as he chokes something chunky, red and ivory up into the porcelain sink. His throat extricates around it as he hocks it up with a series of fractured hacks. Blood and half-clear spittle stream down his chin. Nausea enters his stomach through his nose, making him throw up again, though this time it’s dry and heaving.

“Oh, my God!” Julie grabs a white towel from behind her, almost forcing it down his throat as she tries to clear the phlegm from his face, her own flashing an even greener shade of blanched white. “Are- are you okay? What is that?” 

He blinks his eyes clear, staring down into the sink. Within it lies a shard of bone, scratched with pocks of stomach acid and smudges of red. He stares at it, fixated- then, something burns itself into his head. Like the end of a hot poker meeting the grey matter of his brain, it skewers through his skull with a sickening hiss. 

_The figure draws nearer, and, in tandem, a feeling of_ hunger _mounts itself deep in his gut. It portends an aching yen that burrows into his middle and blooms, flourishes, sinks its wet teeth into his stomach and bites down_ hard.

_Suddenly, he’s hungrier than he’s ever been- hungry like he hasn’t eaten in ages, and someone’s dangling a piece of fresh meat right in front of his face, teasing and coquette._

_“Hey, kid... Are you okay?” The stranger slows his pace as he approaches, and Frank can hear the cheery pop tune coming from his earphones, distant and muffled. “Kid?”_

Meat. _The scent of it makes his mouth water- makes it drip with viscous, scarlet tendrils of thick drool. Suddenly, he’s on his haunches- his entire body tenses into a bundle of knots. When he feels the agonizing pain of his shoulders squaring backward and his pelvis shifting beneath his weight, he only focuses on the scent. He doesn’t hear the fabric of his jeans tear, and he doesn’t hear the thrashing panic bubble from the man’s mouth as he sets upon him with bared teeth._

He doesn’t remember everything, but he remembers enough.

* * *

On the intersection of Trafalgar and Red Ridge Road shaded by a thick evergreen copse is a small duck pond. It’d frozen over when the first breaths of winter first strolled into lazy little Ormond. Arching over the pool is a humble, cobblestone bridge, overlaid with copious amounts of graffiti. Streaks of blue and green and bright yellow are severe against the pale earth, covered with a layer of freshly-fallen snow.

As is the blood. 

Susie grew green when she first saw the body. Joey had- clearly- wanted to follow along, but held himself back with immeasurable effort. He and Julie had simply stared, their already mutually quiet cadence fading into nothingness.

“God,” Joey says, his brows furrowed and his lips twisted into something distant and sullen. He’s staring down at the remnants of a mangled corpse, barely recognizable in its butchered state. The body’s broad arms are bent upward in an odd and sickening position as though he’d tried to guard his face before he’d been crushed by something inexplicably heavy. His head is bent to the side, nearly detached from his neck, hanging only from ribs of violently exposed viscera. His chest is concave, bone sticking through his downy black coat. His face isn’t visible through the chunks of dried claret concealing it. “What the hell did you do to him?” 

It’s nearly dawn. Frank shakes in Julie’s t-shirt and sweatpants, thankfully layered with one of Joey’s hoodies from the backseat of his truck. He wants to throw up again.

“I- … I don’t know.” His voice sounds distant, even to himself.

“Do we really need to…” Susie begins, her voice pitched and high. She’s hiding behind Julie, who stands with her arms crossed over her chest. Her nose is pink; as are the planes of her already ruddy cheeks, all highlighted by her cotton-candy hair. Her freckles are sheer against her skin, though it retains its olive complexion. She and Julie are both wearing coats, though Jules’ looks far more expensive- far _warmer._ Frank resists the urge to shiver in Joey's thin windbreaker as the cold bites through the bottoms of his high-tops. His socks are torn, soaked through with warm blood and freezing water. He wants to go home. “Do we really need to-”

“He’s dead. I don’t really think he gives a shit.” Frank snaps. He’s tired. She looks up at him and nods, once- though her eyes linger on his own, as uneasy as they are intrigued.

Joey looks anxious, too. He’s curled in on himself, strong shoulders hunched forward, shadowing his face with his black hood. A distant street lamp flickers past the treeline, its beam of yellowed light thankfully not shining on their little power-huddle. 

“Cut her some slack. You turned him into a fucking pretzel.” 

“Well, do you have any other suggestions?” Frank is cold and he feels sick to his stomach. He can smell iron in the air, all-consuming. It twists his senses, forcing him to close his eyes so he can block out the dim light that’s rebelling against the purpling dawn. He hugs himself, feeling a shiver run down the curvature of his spine. “I’d sure like to hear them.” 

“We could bury him,” Julie says. She still looks stern, her eyes narrowed down at the mess of blood and bone that lay before them in the slush. 

“Well, we don’t have any shovels,” He says, feeling another pang of queasiness wash over him. “And the ground’s frozen solid. It’d be easier just to… to light him up.” Julie’s eyes fill with a measure of boldness that takes him off guard. She looks at him, dead-on and dark.

“You killed him. Guess it’s up to you how we get rid of the body. What's your final verdict?”

 _“I_ didn’t kill shit.” He doesn’t _remember_ killing shit. Or, rather, he doesn’t remember more than vague details. As he stares down toward the man he thinks again of the silhouette that’d approached him in the dark, and of the burst of fresh blood that’d spilled into his mouth soon thereafter.

“The corpse on the ground says otherwise.” Then, she makes the choice for him, ending their exchange with a pointed pour of her gasoline canister. She soaks every inch of the jogger’s body, from his twisted arms to his mangled chest. It leaks into the surrounding snow, melting it into a slurry.

They all follow suit, taking her lead and upturning their gasoline canisters, supplied by Joey’s unwitting uncle. When they finish, Julie grabs a matchbook from out of her pocket and strikes two for good measure. They move as a collective backward toward Joey’s Chevy, parked a good ten feet away. Then, Julie tosses the matches onto the bundle of blood and fabric, setting it alight with a hungry ripple of white-blue flame. He feels his body warm in time with the burning corpse.

“Smells like shit,” Joey says. Julie snorts. Her eyes shine bright with the fire, orange light dappling the pale rust-coloured inserts of her irises. 

“It smells like... burning hair.” 

“That’s because his hair _is_ burning, Suz.” 

Frank was eighteen when he struck a match and burned down the Cineplex on Fennell Avenue with his Legion, each of them either drunk off their ass or higher than a kite.

An explosive spark enveloped the cinema’s entrance in that same ripple of blue and hot white. They cheered and threw their beer cans into the building as it slowly, painfully collapsed in on itself, creaking and hissing with pops of expanding wood and flame-licked brick. The blinking ‘Fairview Cinema’ sign detonated in a flurry of pink and tangerine sparks while the fire roared with aching lust, so much so that the air appeared to tremble around it. When Frank grabbed his bat from his duffle bag and wailed on the ticket stand’s glass pane with enough force to shatter it on his first try, he felt it, blistering and unforgiving against his bare cheek. 

He felt like a rebel without a cause. Now, he doesn’t know what to feel- but it most certainly isn’t cold.


	3. Enter Stage Window

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw mentioned animal death, nothing graphic.

_“Thirty-seven-year-old Joseph Connolly has been identified via dental records this afternoon_ _after his incinerated remains were discovered by authorities in the small town of Ormond Alberta, seven hours north of Calgary. Provincial Police have stated that Connolly was a resident of the town, and was last seen alive on the seventh of this month by his surviving wife and seven-year-old daughter.”_ Distant speakers sound through the pane of a first-story bedroom window, crunchy and detached.

The blinds are open, revealing the white-blue light of an old television screen, flickering back and forth as if the signal is marginally off. Posters line the walls, each artfully askew and taped overtop one another to create a collage of hot pinks and muted purples. If one were to look closer, they’d notice the massive hole in the drywall beside the white panelled door. It’s mostly concealed by a large Fiona Apple vinyl and adjoining _Romeo + Juliet_ placard. Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes’ baby-faces stare back at him.

Frank had stolen that placard for Susie straight from the theatre’s foyer right before they’d burned it to the ground. He remembers that night vividly; he’s _been_ remembering that night vividly for the last seven days. And, within those seven days, he’s eaten thirteen (raw) steaks and come close to eating two different neighbourhood dogs. The idea of eating a pet makes him feel even more disgusted than the knowledge that he’d eaten a man. Although, said ‘man’ had a name; Joseph Connolly. Joseph Connolly, who also had a wife, a kid, a home, a job… _God._ He doesn’t feel like arguing with himself over the moral complexities of having nearly devoured someone whole, animal or otherwise. He just hates the idea of accidentally eating one of his friends. Human beings obviously aren’t off-limits.

He’d been close to it. When Julie had first picked him up off the curb, she, apparently, had to back herself into a corner like a prey animal to avoid getting her head bitten off. He still doesn’t remember much of that night, but at least he recalls the ache of a disquieted, unnerving presence that’s followed him everywhere he’s gone for the past week. It’s been pervasive- haunting, almost, and he hasn’t an explanation for it. All he knows is that it’d started at the duck pond.

Frank holds his breath to sate his nerves. His fingers hang off the edge of the wooden pane, gripping tight enough to flush white. He’d climbed out of Susie’s room faster than it’d even taken him to blink, following a sudden knock at her bedroom door. He hadn’t seen where Joey or Julie dived off to, but judging by the lack of raised voices, he can safely assume that they’re hidden away. He tries to eye them from around the room.

He imagines Julie hiding behind the door, or Joey in a corner underneath a pile of bedsheets, both done in jest. He can’t discredit either; they’ve used them as hiding spots before. If his memory serves him right, Mr. Bellemare isn’t exactly the most _observant_ of men, and his poor prescription doesn’t make up for it. 

“You okay in there, sweetheart?” Said man’s voice sounds, edging off into a distant yawn. The door opens a crack, revealing a stream of golden light from the hallway that cuts through the night like a stream of sunshine. Frank curses under his breath. _Go back to bed, old man!_ “I… I thought I heard you talking to somebody.”

“It was nothing, daddy. I’m just on the phone with Jules.” Mr. Bellemare opens the door completely with some hesitation. His shoulders tense. Frank can only see his thick Aviator glasses reflecting the gleam from the television, and the vaguely vignetted silhouette of a stout, chubby man in a housecoat. He glances around the room with a sideways look but has yet to touch the light switch. Without it, he’s blind as a bat, but… like an arc lamp, his gaze slowly draws toward where Frank’s form hangs, growing ever-closer. He feels his fingers curl firmly around the windowpane, right until Susie blows her nose loud enough for Frank to hear it through the glass. 

His brows crinkle. She’d been crying earlier. Profusely, actually. It’d gotten kind of annoying, but he wasn’t planning on saying that to her face. It wasn’t as if she was the one who’d had a mouthful of jogger.

“Hon, were you crying?” Mr. Bellemare’s saccharine tone makes Frank clench his jaw. He’s too… _loving._ It’s a little gross how much he fawns over his daughter. But he supposes that comes with the territory of single parenthood; his mother had been the same. “Are you alright?”

“Just... Just boy stuff. It’s nothing serious. Go back to bed, okay?” _Ha._ Boy stuff. Susie wouldn’t touch a boy with a ten-foot pole. How her father’s kind countenance would turn if he learned Susie was crying over a dead man that she’d helped dispose of. They’re all culpable, as far as the law is concerned.

“You sure?” Her father continues to pry. His voice wavers with a colour of uncertainty. 

“I’m sure.” The old man taps his fingers against the doorframe. He takes a step forward but hesitates right ere braving through the threshold. He stays there, his gaze drawing downward. _What are you waiting for?_

“Alright. Pack it in soon, okay? It’s a school night.” Right before he closes the door, Mr. Bellemare whispers a quiet, singsong, “I love you, Susie Q.” _Ugh._

Then, the room is once again plunged into near-darkness.

It’s silent for a moment after he leaves. Then, gradually, they unveil themselves. Joey opens the closet door, Julie slides out from underneath the bed, and Frank climbs back in through the window easier than he ever had previously. Once his feet are back on the ground, they breathe out a sigh of collective relief. Susie’s still openly sniffling on her purple-cushioned bed, but she’s eased up. 

Sort of. Her face is a little less pink, at least.

“That was so... goddamn _cool,_ ” Joey says, looking Frank up and down. Frank scoffs. He’d dove for the window on unfortunate instinct. He probably looked like an idiot dangling five feet off the ground, too, but at least he knows that nobody in their right mind is walking around in the middle of an Ormond winter at three o’clock in the morning. Julie pinches her lips together.

“More like so goddamn close. The _closet?”_

“What?” Joey raises his arms above his head, stretching languidly. “It worked.” Frank snorts.

“If her dad finds us in here, he’ll blow his top,” Julie says. He _might_. It hasn’t happened yet. Fucker’s blind as a bat.

“If he finds _us,_ ” Joey’s pointer fingers go from Frank back to himself. Then, he once again takes his seat on Susie’s pink desk chair, the backend facing his stomach as he turns back to them. “He’ll blow his top. _She’s_ been your shadow since middle school.”

“M’not her shadow…” Susie mumbles, rubbing anxiously at her forearm. Her eyes linger back toward the television screen, where a different story now plays, though that doesn’t seem to quell whichever gears are turning in her head. Before Frank can say anything to lighten the mood, Joey leans forward to ruffle her sleek bubblegum hair. She squawks, flagging her hands around her head.

“I just mean he’ll think you’re having, like, a girl’s night or something.” Julie crosses her arms, giving a nugatory hum. Frank smirks. He knows that look. 

“Don’t tell me you’re under house arrest again.” He says. He snickers to himself when she looks away, flustered. Her raven hair is swept up into a pair of space buns, stray strands of black falling in front of her eyes. Her thick, oversized red flannel falls overtop her fingers.

“Explains why you cancelled that rager,” Joey mutters. He’d been looking forward to that all month. Frank would feel bad were this not an inappropriate time to think about hosting one of Julie’s famously populous parties. Nearly the entire student body of Fairview High showed up on her porch the last time she’d opened her doors.

“I ‘cancelled that rager’ because my ex-boyfriend _ate_ someone, Joey.” Frank gives her a withering look, which she ostensibly ignores. He resists the urge to once again bring up the fact that he hadn’t been the one to eat Joseph Connolly, though his blood had been in his mouth.

Julie sits down behind Susie, splaying her fingers across her temples. Julie combs her pink locks backward, away from her tear-stained visage, and begins to braid it back. Susie’s cheeks glow red as she keens into her friend’s gentle touch. 

“Now; back to your Necronomicon.”

Susie nods, drying her eyes on her sleeve one last time. Then, she chokes down her emotions with an obvious flair of discomfort, pulling a large leather-bound tome out from underneath her mattress. She plops it down onto the bed in front of her, opening it back up to a dog-eared page. 

He remembers the year she’d smuggled it out of the school library from a display section on Halloween. She’s always been into that occult shit- tarot cards, fortunes, palm-reading, zodiac, whatever. All that spiritual junk that snake-oil salesmen and scammers used to peddle their wares. They’d likely only taken the heavy volume out because it looked old and eerie- which, to be fair, it definitely is.

‘Necronomicon’ was an apt reference; within it lies a series of topics ranging from ghouls to ghosts to demons and the occasional cryptid. It’s some weird in-character Aleister Crowley shit, each paragraph written as if the creatures themselves are real as opposed to bedtime stories. Frank doesn’t even believe in aliens, unlike Suz. It’d been a quirky find for her, and, _apparently,_ a timely one.

He still thinks this is a stupid goddamn idea. He doesn’t want to go to a hospital and he sure fucking doesn’t want to go to the cops, but he doubts that leafing through an old book from Fairview High’s library is going to do anything to ‘help’. He doesn’t even know what _help_ entails. 

Frank sits back down on the faux-fur carpet in front of them, fidgeting with the bandages wrapped tight around his hands. 

“A 'man-wolf', or, occasionally, lycanthrope-” Susie reads, gesturing to Frank as if the supposed werewolf in the room isn't obvious, “Is a human with the ability to shape-shift into a wolf, either purposely or after being placed under a curse or affliction with the transformations occurring on the night of a full moon-” He glances down toward the book. On the opposite page is a smokey, charcoal sketch of a half-naked man, covered in copious amounts of misshapen chunks of bloody fur. It’d be pretty cool, were it not for the fact that someone had defaced the page with a dick drawn between his legs in red sharpie. It’d been stolen from a public library, after all. 

"Suz," Frank cuts her off, grabbing for the book that half lay in her lap. She yanks it backward, and Frank scowls. "No offence, but can we just… quit it with the whole Buffy thing?" 

“If I’m Buffy, what does that make you? Monster of the week?” She seems proud of herself. He quirks a brow, promptly aiming to knock her down a peg. Jokingly, of course.

“You aren’t Buffy. You’re Giles.” She shuts her trap, her smile fading into a straight line. “Anyway. Is there anything in that big-ass book that tells you how to- I don’t know- _cure_ it? Because I’m pretty sure you’re just regurgitating fairy tales. I’m not a fucking _werewolf._ ” With that ultimate word, everyone turns to stare down at him- three pairs of eyes, all equally unimpressed.

“Then you ate a dude of your own volition. Congrats, Morrison. I’m sure Dahmer’s smiling up at you from Hell.” Julie says.

They accomplished little else of merit during their impromptu Midnight Society meeting. Once finished, they’d filed out of Susie’s modest one-story bungalow through her bedroom window one by one, ere meeting up on the driveway and running across the street. Frank recalls a time where they would’ve done so while hollering their way through the streetlights that dapple the sidewalks of Bryna Avenue. Now, the three of them are eerily silent. Behind them, Susie locks her doors for the night, double latching the window and drawing down the blinds. 

Her house is closer to Frank’s on the metaphorical safety scale. Ormond isn’t opulent or new-age enough to house wealthy people that need ‘separating’ from the everyday folk, but, like every other town, it has its tougher neighbourhoods. Julie’s house is the only one of theirs that’s over one story, which is a big deal for a tiny mountain conurbation. She’s never needed to steal in her life, but she’d gone along with him, regardless. That’s how he knew she was his twin flame (she didn’t do things for necessity, but for the _thrill_ ). Though, said flame had died back down to embers in recent months. 

He turns away from Susie’s house, facing Joey’s truck once again. He wants to dwell on _that_ even less than he wants to think about the whole ‘eating human flesh’ thing.

“I don’t want you going home alone,” Joey says, opening the driver’s side door. He doesn’t step inside. Instead, he turns to face Frank, his arms crossed over his broad chest. His ribbed black sweatshirt is tight around his form, keeping him warm in the frost. It isn’t snowing anymore, at least- all the sleet has settled into pockets of slush in the gasoline-ridden ground. Julie’s already loaded into the front seat, curled up to the side with her earphones in. 

Frank clenches his jaw. He isn’t an idiot. He knows Joey wants to look out for him just as much as he doesn’t want Frank to run off and eat a dog or something. Another person, for example. They’re already in enough shit as it is. Julie did a good job covering their- _his-_ tracks, though. They even have a passable alibi within one another for the entirety of last Friday. As long as they all keep their traps shut, they shouldn’t have an issue.

“I live three blocks away. I don’t need a babysitter.” He replies, deadpan. Joey doesn’t budge. Frank points up toward the sky. The stars are bright and the clouds have finally dissipated, leaving behind only a dark grey ether lit up by the yellow, waning moon. “Plus, if your little theory is correct, I’m not gonna wolf out anytime soon.”

He pushes past Joey with enough force to send him skittering backward, then walks toward the sidewalk and into the light of a streetlamp. He hears the younger man rustle behind him, followed by the stiff puttering of his truck starting up. Joey's chevy trails up beside him on the road, slowing down to match his walking pace. Julie rolls her eyes in the passenger seat.

“Here boy- got some treats for you,” Joey says, dangling a loose cigarette out the window. It’s a joke and one that Frank doesn’t precisely take offence to, though that doesn’t keep the angry flush from forming on his cheeks.

“Not a dog, jackass.” Frank roughly shoves his hands into his pockets and pulls out a package of his own, giving it a pointed shake. Their silent exchange drags on for another few seconds before Joey gives him a hesitant shrug, cranking his window back up and driving down the road like a bullet train with little care for the speed limit. 

He flips the back of the truck off as it peters away.

* * *

Frank’s usual shortcut back home from Susie’s is comprised of jumping three different fences. He reaches the first- a half-picketed fence that borders her tiny front lawn- without trouble, simply hurdling himself over it into a speeding vault. His fingers grip around the frozen wood with a dexterous push. 

He laughs to himself as he feels the wind ruffle through his hair. It’ll take him more than a week to adjust to the fact that he won’t be out of breath by the time he reaches the third. The gravel pounds underneath his feet, inebriating and steadfast, though he barely feels a thing as he heaves himself up overtop the wire fence that surrounds Ormond’s only serviced playground. A faded plastic rock-climbing wall sits in the centre, standing only at about six feet tall. A rubber tire-swing winds back and forth along with the wind. A thick layer of frost coats the rope that connects it to a naked elm tree. He comes to a stop in the slush, his threadbare sneakers filled to the brim with ice and frozen water, but he’s too warm in the chest to pay the discomfort any mind.

For the first time in a week, Frank doesn’t feel the weight of something obsessive bearing down on the back of his neck. It’d almost parted from him completely. Maybe a part of him feels relieved that they’d discovered Joseph’s body as though they’d done much to conceal it in the first place. It was far too bloody and far too mangled for them to consider anything other than burning it. It’d been a quick, panicked decision on _all_ of their parts... right?

His attention draws back toward a brick wall that flanks the park on either end; within an inserted gap, a wrought-iron fence lay brimmed with dead ivy trimmings. 

It signifies the beginning of Ormond's, heavy quote-unquote, ‘shopping district’ from that of the Bellemare family's neighbourhood. The term ‘shopping district’ implies that there’s some sort of reason to go there other than to pick up toilet paper and eggs, or, sometimes- when Frank can afford it- a horror flick on DVD from the video store. Ormond is the very definition of backwater in his eyes; they don’t even have a proper supermarket, bar the one that they’d been planning to open in August. But, judging by the deep cavity of frozen dirt that’s lain there since last September…

All that to say, Frank doesn’t have high hopes for this town. 

He pushes through the last fence rather than scaling it lest someone spot him attempting ameture parkour. Then, he stares up, only to be met with something that makes his eyes widen to fan in a lasting torrent of moon-bathed gloaming. 

A man stands before him in the gateway. He _looms,_ more appropriately. He seems young, only about twenty-five at most, though that fact is soon overshadowed. Frank’s gaze draws down to see that the limp form of a woman has been draped across his arm. Her complexion has been rendered sallow, all colour completely drained from her visage, and her blue eyes are blown wide and glossy. The blood which once presumably ran through her veins now coats the alleyway, over the gravel and the two rusted dumpsters that flank the fence- and all over the unnamed man.

He meets his eyes, settling on a penetrating silver. His own skin is eerily white- like bleached ivory, marbled with streaks of dripping scarlet. He’s _smiling._ It’s a sleepy grin, lethargic and slow. He looks sated as he licks his lips, unveiling a row of what look like silvery, gleaming razor caps in his elongated mouth. They aren't human teeth, stark and white and covered in blood and bits of torn flesh.

Frank isn't usually one to play martyr. He knows he won’t care for anyone in this town save his Legion in the long run. But that dark, looming presence that’d been gnawing at him- the part of him that’s reactively raised its hackles- emanates in his abdomen and overtures into another aching feeling. He doesn’t run away, but he doesn’t grab for his knife, either. Instead, he stares, feeling the hunger mount. 

“Hey there, pup,” The man licks the blood off of his gloves as if it were corn syrup, his gaze still lingering on Frank’s with a cloying sheen. “Got hungry while I was waiting. Hope you don’t mind the mess.”


End file.
